Tri-Ace's new RPG is End of Eternity...published by Sega?! (bajillion scans inside)

I'll keep an eye out for this game since it's made by tri-Ace, but I'm a bit disappointed they don't work on a Valkyrie Profile 3 instead.

Some new info via Gamespot:

You encounter numerous battles along the way, from simple gangsters in the city's seedier parts, through to boss battles. The gameplay is semi-real-time, and enemies will move only when you do, which allows you to pause and think your strategy through without being explicitly turn-based. It's possible to "shatter" an enemy's healthbar into separate fragments to make them easier to defeat, and this looks like an interesting concept. You can also activate a bullet time sequence and use this to perform more powerful attacks. Aiding you in combat is an impressive arsenal including machine guns, pistols, Molotov cocktails, and grenades.

Resonance is set in a fictitious Earth city, with a setting that looks to be heavily influenced by the current fashion for steam punk fashions and modernised Victoriana. We don't know the exact time frame, but we saw cobblestone streets and plenty of industrial age contraptions including huge clockwork gears. The storyline will sound familiar to science fiction fans: unbeknownst to the general populace a gigantic machine runs the world of Resonance, and even decides when people should be born, and die. The city appears to be a huge cylindrical structure suspended above the planet's surface, with many individual levels to explore. The only ones privy to the truth is the aristocracy, who live on the structure's lofty upper platforms, and it seems you're destined to come to blows with them at some point.

While the main story is linear, you can unlock side missions. Completing these will earn you XP, and uncover more of the game's plot. Visiting guild halls scattered throughout the city will give you details about both current and side missions, and you can talk to NPCs to uncover more clues about the city.

There's an interesting visual design at work in Resonance. A grainy art style gives the world a gritty look that fits the edgy setting. Backgrounds are pre-rendered and rotate on an axis as you move around corners. The result makes the game look like an elaborately detailed 3D pop-up book, and we look forward to seeing more of it in the future.

This sounds very VERY Valkyrie Profile 2-ish. This makes me very VERY interested.

Edit: New Gameplay video of the main character exploring the city.

It looks EXACTLY like Valkyrie Profile 2. ALL OVER MY FACE!

DO WANT!!

Some new information on the title via Eurogamer.

t's about time tri-Ace had another hit. The studio scored a big fat 9/10 with Valkyrie Profile 2 but that was nearly two years ago. Neither Infinite Undiscovery nor Star Ocean: The Last Hope impressed our reviewers, despite the fact one of them was Simon Parkin - a man who likes JRPGs so much the first dance at his wedding will be Aeris' death music.

Now tri-Ace is changing tack and changing publishers. Sayonara, Square Enix; to be this good takes SEGA, or so the studio reckons these days. According to producer Jun Yoshino, the decision to switch wasn't made for purely financial reasons.

"Because tri-Ace has worked on a lot of RPGs over the years they wanted something fresh to work with," he says, speaking at a SEGA press event in London. "Also when they began this project they didn't just want to limit themselves to the Japanese market. They were looking for a different angle of approach."

In other words, tri-Ace wanted to ensure Resonance of Fate would appeal to audiences around the world - and felt that SEGA could help make this happen. "We have really long discussions as to what a Western audience would look for in an RPG game," says Yoshino.

"Obviously we still need to keep it very Japanese, but [SEGA and tri-Ace] sat down and went through a lot of things which a Western audience find frustrating. We tried to get rid of as much as we could of that without losing the feel of a JPRG. We're pretty confident we've done as much as we can to keep that balance between the two styles."


Shoot the doggie in the face, Billy Ray!
At first glance Resonance of Fate certainly looks like a JRPG. It's set in "neither the future nor the past", according to Yoshino; "It's got a modern-day feel to it but there are still fantasy and sci-fi elements." The emphasis is definitely on steampunk rather than dungeons and dragons.

The gameworld has an industrial, mechanical look, and is painted with a palette of steel greys and rusty browns. Characters run along corroded walkways, past brick walls and underneath iron girders as neon signs flash in the background. Everywhere you look there are spinning cogs and clicking gears, which Yoshino explains are part of a huge, clock-like machine that runs the world. The machine was originally designed to clear pollution from the air but a community has since sprung up and built a tower around it.

The higher up the tower you go, the higher the society you'll find there. Right at the top are the two most powerful members of the population, the only two who are aware the machine is running the whole show. Then come the elite, further down are the working class and right at the bottom are the slums, complete with scary monsters.


This is what the world looks like from a distance. Even though they are at war.
To demonstrate how it all works Yoshino switches from the game environment to the world map. Instead of being top-down, the view is side-on; you can see each layer of the world and how it's positioned around the central tower. Each layer is comprised of different-coloured hexagons. Grey hexagons denote areas of the map which have yet to be unlocked. To open them up, you must collect white hexagonal map fragments from enemies you have defeated. You can then slot them in on the world map and unlock new areas in whatever order you please.

Other hexagons are brightly coloured and can only be unlocked with map fragments of the right colour and shape. These are harder to find, and can usually only be obtained by defeating bosses or completing critical missions.

Yoshino takes us back to the regular gameworld now and introduces us to the game's three playable characters - a girl called Reanbell, a man in tight jeans called Zephyr and their leader, Vashyron. They are all mercenaries or, to give them their official title, Hunters. "They take on missions given to them by the aristocracy or upper class, like delivering packages," says Yoshino. Sort of like steampunk Ocado van drivers, then.

The Hunters share an apartment which is handily located next to the Abel City Guild Building. This is where you go to pick up new quests, via a noticeboard which provides info about each mission and details of which NPC you must talk to. Head back outside and you'll find the NPC waiting patiently, complete with a big exclamation mark hovering over their head. Main missions will be allocated automatically but as you'd expect, there are plenty of optional side quests if you're thirsty for extra XP.

Combat will often take place during missions but there are random encounters to deal with too. Yep, you might have thought they'd died out around about the same time as Blazin' Squad and the Queen Mother, but tri-Ace has seen fit to bring them back for Resonance of Fate. "It's about keeping within the structure of the JRPG," says Yoshino. "The random encounters are not as frequent as in traditional RPGs, but they're still there. The idea is to give you a sense of the immense size of the gameworld."

Western movies such as The Matrix and Equilibrium have been important influences on the combat system, according to Yoshino. "There's a lot of gunplay-slash-martial-arts, a lot of bullet-dodging," he says. "The team wanted to play on that partly because they want to appeal to Western audiences more. But also because it's different - not many people make RPGs with firearms in, especially JRPGs.

"This isn't your typical fantasy RPG where you use magic and swords and things like that," he continues. "The characters are equipped with guns and they can also use throwing weapons like grenades and Molotov cocktails. All the weapons are modern weapons."


Remember when bullet time was in everything? Certainly made Neighbours more exciting.
In the demo we're watching, Zephyr packs a pair of machine guns while his colleagues carry pistols. The machine guns enable him to cause "scratch damage", which means he can take a lot of health off enemies very quickly. However, they'll recover from scratch damage over time. So the other characters need to step in and cause "action damage" with their pistols. This makes the scratch damage permanent and in many cases will finish enemies off. The point is, you need to think strategically about who is equipped with which weapon and the order in which they attack.

"The combat is not really turn-based," says Yoshino. "If you're familiar with one of our previous titles, Valkyrie - whenever you move, the enemy can move. You're also limited as to how much you can move. You can't just run around freely without thinking about it as you will run out of action points. When that happens, you will stop moving."

Best to keep an eye on your action points then, and on the amount of energy you've stored up for your special attack. Once this is charged a dotted line will appear in front of your character, You can move it around the screen to determine which enemy you want to attack, and where your character will end up when the attack is over.


Just take the batteries out, surely?
So combat isn't about controlling characters' movements directly, it's about making decisions with regard to timing and positioning. This means you get to sit back and watch those Matrix-inspired acrobatic feats as your character dives and spins through the air, firing off a hail of bullets in glorious slow-mo. It's certainly more cinematic and impressive than a man in a pointy hat making lightning come out of a stick.

The only problem is the nagging feeling you've seen it all before. And you have, if you've ever seen The Matrix or Equilibrium, or played Max Payne or Stranglehold, or had anything to do with popular culture at all in the last ten years. The inclusion of elements such as random encounters and hexagonal world maps don't do much to help matters, and the steampunk theme isn't exactly original.

But according to Yoshino the game is only 70 per cent complete, and who knows what tricks tri-Ace has up its sleeve. Recent form aside, it's important to remember the studio has produced some of the greatest JPRGs ever. Perhaps SEGA's influence will help tri-Ace make a return to form. And who knows, perhaps Simon Parkin will end up skipping round the dancefloor to the theme from Resonance of Fate.

Pictures in the link.

I want this game.

Originally Posted by John

Clearly, in the future all guns will be recoilless automatic pistols with bottomless magazines.


Still looking rather cliche, alas.

Actually every time they showed a character attacking one enemy their ammo ran out every time and then they switched to a different battle scene. The only time they didn't run out of ammo was when they were using the one gun that had 999 bullet (or bombs?) most of the guns had like 6 to 15 bullets at a time.

The gameplay sounds intresting but the plot seems really cliche.

Alright, that last interview has me rather hyped.

It's sounding cliche, but in a way that I'd love.


Also: Random Encounters? Whyyyyyyy? Why? Why? Why? Why?

DO. NOT. WANT.

New End of Eternity gameplay video from GamesCom!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQr60TjrS74
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqay59w5ebk

The encounters don't SEEM random, but we'll see.

Make sure to stay up to date with all of the latest GamesCom information in the Official Thread.

New screens:










http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=65717

DO WANT.

Looks cool. Don't know if I like the art direction, though.

The art direction is growing on me, actually.

It's still rather generic, but I like Gothic Sci-Fi Grunge, so meh.

Originally Posted by John

The art direction is growing on me, actually.

It's still rather generic, but I like Gothic Sci-Fi Grunge, so meh.

I'm not unsure over the atmosphere; rather, it's just that it seems that it can't decide on whether it wants to be heavily anime-ish, realistic, or realistic with a dash of anime thrown in.

It looks broadly like Appleseed Ex Machina to me, stylistically, which is the largely-realistic (and highly-detailed) backgrounds with anime character designs wearing impossibly stylish and intricate clothing.

Actually, that fits 90% of all anime out there.

Originally Posted by John

Alright, that last interview has me rather hyped.

It's sounding cliche, but in a way that I'd love.


Also: Random Encounters? Whyyyyyyy? Why? Why? Why? Why?

DO. NOT. WANT.

Haha. As I was reading your "Whyyy?WHyy?Whyyy?"s I was up to a bit in Sweet Child of Mine where Axel sings "Aye, Aye, Aye, Aye" and I couldn't help but reading in time. How amusing.

Anyways, on topic: I so hope this is good. I've overlooked all J-RPGS this gen as none of them seem that original and well executed.At least, not enough to warrant spending my hard-come-by money on. Though, at the moment, from what I've seen and read here I'm severely doubting this game.

New four minute battle trailer. Kinda boring.

TGS 2009 Trailer.

Day one!

Not sure about the combat though. I'm not a HUGE fan of VC-type gameplay, even if VC's gameplay was really good.

New trailer showcasing environments and customization! All I have to say is, OMGOMGOMG. This is looking amazing. I hope that they change up the scenery just a little, but the art direction is fantastic so I'm not worrying about things getting repetitive just yet. As for the character / weapon customization, it's mind blowing. That one part where it shows you short cutscenes with completely different skins? AMAZING!

There's also an extended trailer showcasing the characters. Nothing much new in there, but still looking great!

Man I can't wait for this game.

The story premise looks soo good. Still not sure about the battle system. I'm sure it won't be terrible, especially since it's not nearly as progressive as Valkyria Chronicles, so much less is at risk, and it'll have a much greater chance of being closer to Valkyrie Profile 2's combat.

Some new details:

Originally Posted by Destructoid

* Adjustable font size to suite SD and HD
* Both PS3 and Xbox 360 versions support (but not require) HD installs
* All music in 5.1 surround, recorded in concert hall
* no disc swapping
* save anywhere, even in battle
* battles have a retry feature

Sounds amazing how they're polishing even the smallest details. Can't wait!

Originally Posted by GK: 5895/9999

Some new details:



Sounds amazing how they're polishing even the smallest details. Can't wait!

Yeah I saw that. Pretty great. I'm kinda cold on this game right now so that's why I'm not posting too much stuff, but all the same, I think the game will at least be pretty good.

Another huge 6 minute trailer:



It's hard to express my excitement when nobody else seems bothered about it. Can't wait for this, likely one of my favourite games of 2010 from the looks of things! You run like a Chocobo though. Lol.